Your Right to Know

A new drug-testing program for some Ohio welfare recipients had a rocky life span of about 24
hours, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be reborn again.

As swiftly as Senate Republicans stuck the three-county test program into legislation on
Tuesday, they stripped it out yesterday after advocates for the poor rose in opposition and the
Kasich administration let it be known that it would be handled better in separate legislation.

The Senate did add $42 million to the state’s Clean Ohio program to help pay for green-space
projects and farmland preservation. That proposal was part of the mid-biennium review, a broad
batch of policy changes that passed the Senate yesterday by a 25-8 vote.

The short-lived welfare proposal would have set up a test program requiring applicants suspected
of illicit drug use to pay for and pass a drug test before receiving welfare benefits. If a person
failed the test, the applicant would be sent to drug treatment and could not receive benefits for
at least six months. If the person passed, he or she would be reimbursed the cost of the test.

Democrats and advocates for the poor called the proposal mean-spirited and a criminalization of
the poor, noting that other states have seen few, if any, benefits from similar efforts.

Oklahoma yesterday became the fourth state this year to require such drug screening.

Sen. Shirley A. Smith, D-Cleveland, thanked Republicans for removing the testing program, as did
a coalition of public-services supporters, Advocates for Ohio’s Future. “We’re grateful (they) ...
recognized the harmfulness of this provision and removed it from the bill,” said Gayle Channing
Tenenbaum, co-chairwoman of the coalition.

“The only people this stigmatizes are the drug dealers,” said Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster,
who proposed the drug tests. “Law-enforcement officials have told me they have seen the Ohio Works
First (welfare) cards in their names.”

Schaffer introduced the drug-testing bill last session and will continue to iron out details in
that legislation, he said. For example, Senate President Tom Niehaus said, some questioned what
happens in a rural county if a person tests positive and is sent for treatment but there is no
drug-treatment center nearby.

“I’m glad the governor is committed to working with us on it,” Schaffer said. “I’ve been working
on this for two sessions, and I think we’re about 90 percent there.”

The situation is similar to what happened in the House a few weeks ago when Republicans inserted
into the mid-biennium review a controversial proposal to defund Planned Parenthood, only to later
pull it. A packed hearing room turned out yesterday for the latest House hearing on a separate
Planned Parenthood funding bill.

As for Clean Ohio, Gov. John Kasich placed $6 million in Clean Ohio money into the two-year
capital budget, but critics said that was far too little, considering the issue voters approved
overwhelmingly in 2008 allows up to $100 million. All $6 million was earmarked for upkeep of
current trails.

Of the $42 million in new money that the Senate added yesterday, $36 million would go to
green-space projects and $6 million would go to farmland preservation.

Asked this week about more Clean Ohio money, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chris Widener,
R-Springfield, said his caucus supported it. But the main question has been whether Kasich will
agree to it.

“The voters approved that bonding capacity,” Widener said. “While it may have been a little
different economic times when it passed, we still have an obligation to make some kind of movement
in that area and make some kind of appropriation to try and meet the obligation that voters asked
for.”

Local officials have noted that without additional money, dozens of projects and purchases
across the state would be delayed.

Franklin County has received $20.7 million in Clean Ohio funds for 43 conservation and trails
projects since 2005, leveraging an additional $12 million. In surrounding counties, the fund has
been used to permanently protect 8,300 acres of farmland on 45 easements.

Jennifer Fish, director of the Franklin County Soil and Water Conservation District, has said
that Clean Ohio funds are protecting 500 acres of land in the county, providing stream protection
and water-quality improvement.